Bolton, Hanson, and Color Revolution Plan for Iran

It will take a while for Trump and his crew of recycled neocons and neo-neocons—converts of the MAGA variety—to realize their perverse dream of overthrowing the mullahs in Iran.

An outright invasion is out of the question. While an invasion effectively overthrew Saddam Hussein and prepared the way for destroying Iraq, that event was preceded by more than a decade of medieval sanctions that killed over a million people, including 500,000 children. In effect, Iraq was a third world basket case with a broken military long before George W. Bush and his neocon marauders invaded.

Even so, the invasion was followed by years of resistance to occupation that further complicated turning that country into an obedient client state.

It can be argued that resistance was prolonged by the Pentagon for the sake of psychological and counterterrorism operations and the creation of new and more gruesome enemies, most notably the Islamic State. It morphed from Abu Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq (Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn) into the Islamic State to realize its plan for a Salafi caliphate—a plan outlined in a declassified 2012 Pentagon paper. The Pentagon looked into its crystal ball and predicted this jihadi salafist caliphate would be used to “isolate the Syrian regime.”

Minus that decade plus of softening up under Bush I and then Bill Clinton—and the devastating effect Bush I’s initial invasion had on Iraqi society andinfrastructure—the second invasion would have been far more difficult and problematic.

Trump the geopolitical idiot has left Plan Iran up to veteran creative destructionist John Bolton. It appears he farmed the finer details of the plan out to Jim Hanson, “a self-proclaimed expert ‘practitioner of the art of war’ who is virtually unknown in Washington,” according to Max Blumenthal.

Under the direction of John Bolton, the Trump White House is reviewing an Iran regime change plan put forward by a right-wing troll posing as a counter-terror expert, Jim "@Uncle_Jimbo" Hanson. https://t.co/0HlvqidQb9

Hanson is the director of the Security Studies Group, a sort of alt-national security council imbued with the most crackpot fringe neocons, including former members of Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy. Gaffney is noted for his enduring Islamophobia, which Trump embraced during his presidential campaign.

To his credit, H.R. McMaster kept the more extreme elements of the fringe neocon movement out of the Trump NSC, but now that he’s history they are invited in through the front door.

“With Bolton in the White House, these forces have converged to produce an Iran policy that is edging quickly from containment to rollback. And Hanson appears to be in the thick of the action, producing a regime change blueprint for Trump’s NSC,” Blumenthal concludes.

Hanson’s three page white paper “deemphasizes U.S military intervention, instead focusing on a series of moves to embolden an Iranian population that has increasingly grown angry at the ruling regime for its heavy investments in military adventurism across the region,” Adam Kredo writes for The Washington Free Beacon, which received a copy of the paper on May 10.

Iran’s failed protests in January—a template for future action—were obviously the work the color revolution gang in the United States.

“There is no doubt that the Iranian government is tyrannical and oppressive, but there is much doubt as to whether or not these protests are the result of Iranians being fed up with that rule or whether they are the result of yet more Western meddling in the internal affairs of other countries, particularly those next on the chopping block,” writes Brandon Turbeville.

Bolton and his alt-NSC believe stepping up economic pressure on Iran now and encouraging ethnic minority separatist movements will be the right recipe to overthrow the mullahs. Compare this to US support—despite Turkish outrage—of the Kurds in Syria.

This assumes the Iranian people are stupid. Most realize their economic hardship is the result of decades of imposed sanctions. It is likely true many of them oppose the vast amount of money spent defeating US-Saudi-Israeli proxies in Syria, but they also know the number one culprit for their extended misery is the United States and its partners in Saudi Arabia and Israel. Millions of Iranians oppose the austere Shia theocracy ruling their country. However, they oppose even more fervently foreigners and their handpicked client—the MEK cult or possibly the former Shah’s son—ruling the country.

https://twitter.com/WakeUpB42L8/status/993943688098168832

The Hanson plan will ultimately fail. Iran has an effective police state in place and short of direct US military assistance to restive and violent national minorities, the Iranian state will put down any resistance to its theocratic rule.

In order to be effective, the Iraq scenario will need be reenacted on a larger scale. First, the wholesale destruction of Iran’s civilian infrastructure followed by suffocating sanctions and, some time later, another invasion.

This is highly improbable and physically impossible. The US military is stretched thin in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and is conducting multiple military operations in Africa, from Somalia to Niger. It is also participating in the genocide of the people of Yemen.

The prospect of failure will eventually produce much anxiety and frustration on the part of the neocons and the Zionist Likud Israelis.

Other, more ominous and unthinkable options will emerge. If anything can be said about the neocons, it is their pit bull persistence.

Now that Trump is at the helm of state, there is no telling what will happen. He’s an advocate of so-called mini-nukes. If Bolton’s Plan B fails miserably—as appears likely—nuking Iran, as Sheldon Adelson, Trump’s Zionist election campaign paymaster has advocated, will be a distinct and horrific possibility.